


Box

by jenna_thorn



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-13
Updated: 2010-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-11 19:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/115862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenna_thorn/pseuds/jenna_thorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xander, leaving Sunnydale</p>
            </blockquote>





	Box

He pulled the tape out a few inches and let it slide back with a hiss and a snap. Area was length by width and volume was length by width by depth and he never really wrapped his mind around how mass worked into it, but souls had more mass than bodies because the bus was too damn full for it to be only them. And him. Without the others.

A handful of girls couldn't use that much space but he felt them pressing. It wasn't the noise, but it was. It wasn't the color and the flutter of sleeves, but it was. It wasn't the constant turning to try to see the edges, or his hesitancy in stepping to the ground because the world was foreshortened and too far away; that really wasn't it. He pulled the tape out. Twelve inches, one foot. Sideways it looked right but straight on it didn't, and area was height by width. He thumbed the catch, let the tape slide in.

He and Willow had fit, a jigsaw puzzle, a pyramid with Jesse, then Jesse was gone, but Buffy stepped in but this Buffy didn't fit them. Or they didn't fit her. They didn't fit each other. He couldn't saw off any more corners of himself to make room for shards of other people and the gaping hole that Anya left was still there and really what he wanted was wood. A two by four and a t-square and something to do with his hands. Make a box to put his soul in. He thumbed the tape out again.

"Xander, would you stop that?"  
"No."

Buffy stood but Faith put her hand, rough nailed, on Buffy's shoulder and didn't so much press her back down as hold her. He looked at his hands, the callus at the base of his thumb, the crescent at the base of the nail of the other. It would grow out. He let the tape slide in slowly, pressing it against the side of his finger, not so much to quiet it as to see the mark turn white, then red. Faith defended him? Had the world so changed that they were thrown to the middle, intersection of chalk lines, cut here? Here's your life until now and all the rest is another site, another day. Rough cut with a band saw, rasp down the edges.

Anya was dead and Spike was dead and his mom was dead and he hadn't even thought to check on her, on his uncle, on Jesse's grandmother with her ribbon candy stuck together and he hadn't found them, made them run. There wasn't any room in the box that held his soul for them, just for Anya and a half dozen girls who splintered in the edge of his vision. He closed his eye and pulled the tape out again.

"I'm probably the last person to know what to say, you know?"  
"Yeah."  
"So I'm not even gonna try."  
"Okay."  
"Just gonna talk."  
"Right."  
"You're gonna listen."  
He thumbed the catch release and the tape slid shut.  
Faith rubbed her forehead with the heels of both hands and shouldered him. "You telling me I don't measure up?"  
"Hunh? No...I just."  
"You can, you know. I mean, I know. That I do and I don't and none of it really makes sense."  
"I'll go along with that last part."  
They were sitting closely enough that he could feel her glance back. She was on the wrong side; he couldn't see her. None of them had gotten used to that yet.

"I build boxes," he said.  
"Uh-hunh"  
"I build really good boxes."  
"Uh-hunh."  
"I used to build boxes."  
"Guess now you build Slayers. "  
"I don't know how to do that,"  
"Bullshit. You've been doing it for years," she said.

"I think maybe … I'm … is this the rest of my life?"  
"It's that or the suburbs."  
"I'm not sure I want either."  
"Then you are buried in Sunnydale." Her jacket creaked as she waved, generally backward, and continued, "Xander, we all spent time dead in Sunnydale, but Buffy's walking, Hell, I'm on my feet."  
"Maybe I can build feet." He pulled the tape to the twelve inch mark and let it stay there, holding it in place with his thumb.

They fell silent. The girls were a low and constant murmur; Wood was talking to someone and if Xander wanted to know who, all he had to do was look up. He ran his thumbnail along the tape, measuring off centimeters and quarter inches. He couldn't hear Faith, and she was sitting apart enough that they didn't touch, but he could smell her jacket. The last quarter inch slid by.

She took the tape from him and measured the length of the back of the seat in front of them, the width of the seat they shared, the edge of the window, pressed warm against him. Then she let it slide closed with a clatter. "There, your world is measured. You got something you need to know the edges of, you know where this is." She waggled it before him and slid it into her pocket.

Xander didn't reach for the tape. She stood on the balls of her toes, swaying automatically with the movement of the bus, then nodded and walked away.

He sat for a space of minutes, an extended moment of miles. He forced a smile, let it fade. Steadying himself, seatback by seatback, he moved to where Giles, legs in the aisle, was telling some story, something with all-vowel names that had about half the Slayerettes enraptured and the other half glassy eyed. Xander tugged on Buffy's ponytail as he slid into the seat with Giles and leaned solidly against him, back to back. Giles paused, but didn't move.

"Needed a pillow, man. Figured you were the one putting me to sleep, you're it." He winked broadly at the snickering girls and deliberately closed his eye.

Faith laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Slodwick's thousand words challenge January 2005


End file.
